Business Resources
Getting More from PR
By Laura Tomasetti, Founder 360 Public Relations
While the year is well underway, there are still steps you can take to leverage PR to support your business in 2009. But with budgets tighter all over, PR must have a laser-sharp focus to be meaningful.
Amid tight budgets, there is also a clutter of media online and off. That’s good news and bad news. There are a plethora of targets to deliver your story to, but not all will return meaningful results. Narrowcasting can be much more effective than casting a wide net.
Your PR team can certainly develop a story strategy to garner attention from mass outlets, such as The Today Show. But is that really where you’ll attract new customers, investors or supporters? Or is it in an online community that you visit regularly, where you know insiders are listening and getting their information and ideas?
Here are a few thought-starters to help you develop or fine-tune your communications plan to make PR more effective:
Set both short-term and long-term goals. The goal for the year may be to grow sales by XX percent. How will this month’s or this quarter’s PR activity help you move toward that goal? It’s unrealistic to expect The New York Times to cover you every week, but your PR team can certainly be creating opportunities that will build toward that big feature story and continual exposure that will help you achieve your year-end goals.
Find your fans (even if you don’t have any yet). Conduct an audit of media and online buzz about your space. Where and when (what time of year) is the news being made? Where do you need to be? You can glean a lot of information using the many free tools Google offers, such as Google Trends, Google News and Google Blogs. Alltop.com is another good free resource for determining the top bloggers covering your space.
Focus on the influencers.
Be relevant. You know your story. Or do you? What are the coverage-drivers in your space? Rather than a “push” strategy that focuses on distributing your news as a standalone, think about how you can insert your company or product into a discussion that’s already happening. What’s your unique vantage point? How can you add value to the discussion? How is your product or service especially relevant in the down economy?
Integrate. CMOs know their budgets have to work harder. PR shouldn’t operate independently. Is there a SEO campaign that PR can learn from and contribute to? Are there promotions PR can help fuel? Rather than creating a free-standing PR event, is there something already funded that PR can get behind? Thinking about PR more broadly can extend PR’s value.
Do more than put out a press release. Press releases are great for “going on the record” with accurate, official information that includes your key messages and can improve search results for your company (be sure to include live links – a service such as Marketwire can help). But press releases don’t deliver the big hits that relationships can. Still, if you’re investing your team’s time in crafting a press release, be sure to merchandise the effort – repackage the press release as an article for a key trade or an abstract for a speaking op, utilize the content on your web site, and link to the press release on your blog, Twitter account and Facebook page.
Leverage social media. At the same time that budgets are being trimmed, social media is proliferating. Without a doubt, the biggest cost of social media is time. Make sure you allocate appropriate resources to leverage social media. If you are your own PR person, set an hour (or even half-hour) aside each day to actively participate in social media circles in your sector. I’ve found Twitter particularly helpful because communication is brief and fast by design and the people I follow often share links to useful information I can easily access. It’s also a highly responsive community. I typically have an answer in minutes when I pose a question to my followers and, likewise, I try to be responsive to their questions.
Measure from start to finish. Set measures at the start of a campaign, not midstream or worse – at the end of the year – and make measurement part of the PR budget. Decide what will matter to your business. What kind of audience engagement should PR be responsible for? Measure web traffic, search position, sales, share of voice, and reach at key points throughout the year. With some fine-tuning and careful measurement, PR could be the silver-lining in your business plan this year.
Laura Tomasetti is Founder and Managing Director at 360 Public Relations in Boston.
